All the experts tell us not to pay too much attention to polls for another week or two. Still, it does look as if Hillary Clinton got a big bounce from her convention, swamping her opponent’s bounce a week earlier. Better still, from the Democrats’ point of view, the swing in the polls appears to […]

by Linda Beale Taxes, Government, and the Good Life, Part 2 In yesterday’s post, Taxes, Government, and the Good Life, I noted the “long-term position of the GOP” in favor of downsizing government, which can be seen, at least in part, as a way to justify the GOP obsession with cutting taxes on the wealthy […]

by Linda Beale Taxes, government, and the good life In 2012, Ed Asner narrated a cartoon video prepared for the California Federation of Teachers called “Taxing the Rich”.  It’s worth watching, given the four-decades-long effort by the GOP to convince ordinary Americans that “trickle down” economic goodies will be coming their way if they only […]

Via Thinkprogress: Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump announced his economic policy advisory team on Friday — a collection of 13 white men. While the list does not include any women or racial minorities, it does include five Steves. The people Trump will ostensibly rely on for economic guidance are are: Steve Roth, a fellow real […]

Lifted from Robert’s Stochastic Thoughts: Ballance RIP Nothing lasts forever, not even the Washington Post’s devotion to Ballance. If Trump had said the earth is flat, they could have written “Opinions on shape of planet differ. Both sides have a point”. but if he asserts (in the same tweet) that it is flat, spherical, and […]

A new Detroit News/WDIV-TV poll finds Clinton up nine points among likely voters in Michigan, 41-32. Note that the pollster says Clinton has a “shocking” lead in the GOP regions of the western and southwestern parts of the state. But Trump told us he is going to put Michigan in play, because he’s doing so awesomely among […]

GOP fundraiser Meg Whitman, a former Hewlett Packard executive, says she’ll endorse Hillary Clinton, arguing that Trump is “dangerous” and a “demagogue”: “She revealed that Mrs. Clinton, the Democratic nominee, had reached out to her in a phone call about a month ago, one of the first indications that Mrs. Clinton is aggressively courting Republican leaders.” One […]

TRUMP: I think I’m going to to do great in Ohio, we’re going to do great in Pennsylvania, I think I’m going to do great in Florida and I think I’m going to do great in states that some people aren’t even thinking about. Because I’m different than Republican candidates, than other Republican candidates. I’ve got states that […]

“Stressing output is the key to improving productivity, while looking to increase activity can result in just the opposite.” Paul Gauguin Policy seeks to increase activity in spite of weak effective demand for output. So is it any surprise that zero-lower-bound monetary policy has not normalized the economy? If only economists would understand Effective Demand […]